1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a parking assist method and a parking assist apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
A known parking assist apparatus obtains image data through an on-board (in-vehicle) camera which is attached to the rear of a vehicle and outputs the image data as a screen on a monitor display mounted near the driver's seat. Although the on-board camera typically provides images of the area behind the rear bumper of the vehicle, the area beneath the body of the vehicle and the area around the rear corners of the vehicle are outside the field of view of the on-board camera. Therefore, the further the vehicle enters a parking space, the less a landmark, such as a white line marking the parking space, remains within the viewing area of the on-board camera, so that it becomes difficult for a driver to park the vehicle because the driver cannot determine the position of the vehicle relative to the parking space or the position of a wheel stop in the monitor display.
To resolve such a problem, an apparatus disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2002-354467 stores image data obtained by the on-board camera in a memory and displays a composite of image data made up of stored past image data and current image data. Such an apparatus reads out image data for an area hidden as a blind spot of the on-board camera and outputs a composite image using the read out image data.
However, in the apparatus described above, image data stored in the memory is deleted when the shift position of the vehicle is changed to a position other than “reverse” or when the ignition system is turned off. Thus, even if a driver wants to repeat a parking operation because the vehicle is improperly positioned within a parking space or because the vehicle and a neighboring parked vehicle are too close, in some cases the image data is no longer available in the memory, and thus a composite image cannot be displayed when repeating the parking operation.